Fearful Businesses Fight Road Widening

Ten years ago Becky Columbus taught her first ballet lessons -- in a garage. She got rave reviews from the 4- to 8-year-olds who attended and from the young dancers' moms.

A few years later she got Orange County's permission to start a dance studio and preschool on Conroy-Windermere Road near Kirkman Road. She spent $250,000 building the school, financed with a small-business loan and a second mortgage on her home.

This year, Columbus said, she has just started making a profit. Her dancers have been seeing their hard work rewarded: One was accepted at the School of American Ballet in New York.

But her studio -- and perhaps the momentum of her business -- soon could be flattened. The county plans to widen the two-lane road that runs by the Columbus Center Dance Academy. What isn't covered with asphalt will become a retention pond.

''I'm going to keep going somehow,'' said Columbus. But because land costs are high, staying in the area where she made her reputation will be expensive. Down the street, Marie Ingenito faces the same problem. Owner of the Picnic Basket submarine sandwich shop for 10 years, she is looking at a 1-acre lot in the area that costs $475,000. With its low-density zoning, lush landscape and lakes, the Windermere area of southwest Orange has become one of the county's most attractive areas for building.

''The growth has been so advantageous to us and the potential in the next couple of years is going to be unreal,'' Ingenito said. ''They're putting me out of business at the greatest time.''

Columbus and Ingenito are among the most likely to object Monday as Orange County commissioners seek public comment on a plan to widen Conroy- Windermere Road from Kirkman Road to Apopka-Vineland Road. Both women have retained lawyers to negotiate settlements on their property. Failing that, the county will have to take the owners to court.

County engineers plan to widen the 3 1/2-mile stretch to six lanes at a cost of $17.7 million. The extra lanes are needed to accommodate traffic from the MCA-Universal Studios project as well as large residential projects such as MetroWest.

Commissioner Vera Carter, however, would like to limit the six-lane widening from Kirkman to Hiawassee roads because she believes four lanes will be sufficient from Hiawassee to Apopka-Vineland. The change would not save either woman's property, however.

Although Conroy-Windermere carries about 10,000 cars a day, cutting through an area with large homes spread across substantial lots, the county expects 30,000 cars a day by 2010. Conroy-Windermere is one of the few east- west roads available for residents. The project is scheduled for completion by December 1990.

Until Wednesday, the developer of a shopping center at the corner of Kirkman and Conroy-Windermere was delighted by the widening. ''If the county and whoever's in charge of this has that kind of foresight, then it's because it's a strong growth area,'' said Harold Hendrix, vice president of Watkins Associated Developers Inc. Watkins built the 34-store Kirkman Oaks shopping center that opened last June.

Later on Wednesday, however, Hendrix learned that the county wants to put a concrete median on Conroy-Windermere to keep people from crossing between his shopping center on the north side of the road and Turkey Lake Plaza shopping center on the south. The median will allow traffic from Windermere to make a right turn into his competitor's lot but will force drivers to turn left onto Kirkman and then left again to get to his lot.

''We built the center based on the traffic being able to come in there,'' Hendrix said. ''There's no way we can compete with Turkey Lake Plaza when they can make a right turn.''

Hendrix said shops in the center, geared to upper-income clientele, depend on Windermere residents for up to 60 percent of their business. What irks him especially is that the concrete median would go on 1,100 feet of roadway for which his company paid $340,000.

But Bill Wythe, Orange County's assistant manager for highway construction, said Hendrix's fears are unfounded. If Turkey Lake Plaza has an entry advantage, Kirkman Oaks has an exit advantage. Residents can head back to Windermere more easily from Hendrix's shopping center than from the competition because of a right-turn advantage, he said.

Carter said she would consider an alternative proposed by Hendrix's group that would prevent crossing between the shopping centers but still would allow Windermere drivers to enter either center from Conroy-Windermere Road.

The commissioner, whose district includes the road, can offer less hope for the others. Columbus' property, because it lies at the bottom of the overpass crossing Florida's Turnpike, would be too much of a liability with a wider road, Carter said. Accidents would be common if cars were allowed to turn into her property after crossing the bridge.

But plans to widen Conroy-Windermere were on the books when Columbus bought her property, so why did the commissioners let her start the business?

''We probably shouldn't have,'' Carter said.

Columbus asked for and got an exemption that let her start the business even though it was zoned for residential use. ''You take your chances when you don't buy land zoned appropriately for what you want,'' Carter said.

But Columbus thinks her case illustrates a problem others will face. ''When it's not affecting you, it doesn't seem to matter too much,'' she said. ''But there's so much growth going on here that if people don't take more time determining who's going to make these decisions, then we're at the mercy of whatever they want to put in.''